Yeah, so you got the tentative version of a Top 20 at the arse end of 2002 but a couple more votes came in which helped The Streets to win by a virtual mile. Eventually a nice round 50 votes were cast and this allowed Biffy Clyro to sneak in at the expense of Doves. Cheeky. A massive total of 130 different albums were voted for this year but merit has been given only to what has been decided by democracy and better promo campaigns to be The Top 41.

The Voting

Every staff member was requested to provide a list of 5 of their favourite albums of the year in order of … favouriteness. An incredibly complex points system was devised by yours truly which gave heavier weighting to those albums which were the #1 choices and also those albums which received more than 1 vote but of lower placings. To have made into this list – The Final Cut – the album must have been voted for by a minimum of 2 writers. It made it fairer. Promise.

There were some albums which some of our staff found uniquely beautiful. They alone deemed these albums to be their #1 choice of 2002 yet nobody else saw anything even remotely worthy in them. There’s no accounting for taste round here. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There were a few of our staff who surpassed all levels of being alternative and chose 5 albums that nobody else voted for (and more than likely will not have even heard of). Adam Anonymous, Ralph Cowling, Steve Gray, Mat Hocking and Joe Shooman: we salute you. Zombina And The Skeletones? I mean, come ON! You can not be serious.

DiS-cuss: How wrong is that list, exactly? Why are such cretins allowed on board here? Why are their opinions allowed to be aired? Why the hell isn’t it an alternative to anything else? What kind of number is 41?